Category: Blades in the Dark: Discussion

The rogues visited a temple to the Ecstasy of the Flesh. The focal point of the sanctuary was a 20 foot tall roughly woman-shaped statue made of wax.

Supplicants would write their prayers on tiny vellum strips, roll them up, and put them in brass cylinders with one open end. Then they would push the open end into the waxy flesh of the statue.

Once a year, the statue is melted, the vellum flaring and glittering away. In the meantime, the brass studs all over the statue gave it a sequined look, or a reflection of what stars must once have looked like.

The scoundrels did NOT choose to put their own prayers in the effigy.

I will be interested to see what the full rules suggest for when a crew hires an expert to help with the heist. Should the expert have ratings and dice? Should the expert count as equipment? Should the expert participate in group actions? How could they NOT? Best practice, who rolls for the expert? Is that task assigned to the player who hired the expert, or maybe the GM keeps the NPC task close at hand?

Last night the crew hired a whisper to help out with magical stuff, and she proved instrumental to the mission. But she was an NPC, the first time I’ve run a heist with an NPC along. I could see reasonable players wanting to add an NPC as a crew member, not a ganger or hired expert. I wonder how those situations will be handled–at least, how the rules will recommend we handle them.

Here is a reference sheet I made for my Unrecommendable crew. They’ve had four sessions, and in that time they’ve done all sorts of unrecommendable things.

This has a roster of names of people and places, their crew sheet, and their faction allegiances.

https://fictivefantasies.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/the-unrecommendables-6-30-15.pdf

https://fictivefantasies.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/the-unrecommendables-6-30-15.pdf

I have some reflections on the game after my session last night.

One is, this idea is super-fun and I’m glad I got it to the table at last.

https://plus.google.com/115462175177465088519/posts/GaBxckA8M3S

Let’s talk rules for a minute.

Any doubts I had are gone, on how great it is merging the action and effect roll. It’s smooth, intuitive, and good stuff altogether.

I’m not sure if this is right, but I ruled that when one person takes a point of stress to grant another person +1d, then the helping character doesn’t need to make a roll to be a part of a group action.

For example, if a whisper is using Attune to get through a spooky environment while damping the signature of life force that attracts ghosts, someone could spend 1 stress and contribute +1d to the ghost and not have to roll to see if the whisper takes stress for leading the action or not.

Is that right? I welcome other thoughts. It was a really nice way for non-skilled people to help out and not make the leader more vulnerable to failure; automatic stress, yes, but helping the whole group.

Previously I had been sort of willfully ignorant in using fine quality items, letting them grant +1 on the action roll rather than +1 effect. The main reason for this was because there is only an effect if there is a clock to fill, otherwise the action roll does it all. So your fine equipment does not help at all for a simple roll, and that’s awful.

I think it might be cool to let the player choose whether they grant +1d on the roll or +1 effect. With multiple items that could apply, perhaps one of each. (Like a whisper with a spirit mask, and a signet ring of the ghost in question.) 

I miss rolling for heat. I miss rolling for the development.

I was skeptical of entanglement at the beginning of the mission, but it was fun for the mission where they snuck in; the nobleman got home two days early, and they had to scramble. =)

I like getting two actions for downtime instead of free actions and an optional action. 

For my games, I am inverting the vice/trauma. You clear stress with 4 dice with 0 trauma, -1d per point of trauma. It really helped us get stress cleared so we could do two heists in one session, and it creates a penalty for gaining trauma instead of a bonus.

I hope this feedback is helpful.